It doesn’t take a 17-month-long, $144,590 study to conclude that Butler School District has too many buildings for its gradually dwindling enrollment. It’s common knowledge — an established fact — that a district with 11 elementary school buildings is wasting money when those schools operate at 60 percent to 87 percent capacity — and the numbers will worsen in coming years.

When the school district hired Thomas and Williamson Project Management of Pittsburgh in August 2013 to do the 17-month study, the question was, and still is, what to do about the enrollment declines.

Answers will begin to emerge this evening when the consultant presents an update of its facilities study during a special meeting of the Butler School Board. The meeting begins at 5:30 p.m. in the high school auditorium. We encourage the public to attend.

While the need to close some of the elementary schools should be obvious, the decision won’t be easy. Every neighborhood is likely to defend its own school and to plead that its school should stay open. The scenario could become politicized as competing neighborhoods campaign to keep their schools open and close other schools.

That’s where the wisdom of a study comes in. A paid consultant develops options and recommendations based on a compilation of facts, statistics and trends rather than sentiments, assumptions and anecdotal evidence.

Tonight’s presentation is expected to dwell on the methodology being employed by Thomas and Williamson. The presentation might come across as a little dry, but that’s a good thing.

Thomas and Williamson President Jon Thomas says he will present “a little primer to show the methods that we’re using to develop the concepts that we’re going to present,” along with a review of “historic enrollment, how changes have happened there, their historic budgets to show the relationship between the amounts of the students and amounts of the budgets, what their capacities have been in their schools, how full their schools are.”

Specific recommendations will come later. Tonight’s groundwork will be about how those recommendations will be made.

Now is the time for public participation; now is the time for school board members to discuss thoroughly and clearly what will be an unavoidably painful process.

Let’s not lose sight of the objectives: judicious stewardship of the public’s tax dollar; effective use of limited educational resources; a competent, cost-effective education.

These objectives will necessitate tough decisions in coming months. Let’s make sure the tough decisions are the right ones.